Yezidi Demonstration in Front of the White House

Yezidi community in Washington, DC and their non-Yezidi Kurdish brethren held a demonstration in front of the White House on August 9, 2014 to demand more help from President Obama.

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Who Are Yezidis? Yezidis, who refer to themselves as Ezidis, are a Kurdish non-Muslim population living predominantly in the Sinjar (Şengal) region near Mosul. A sizable Yezidi population also lives in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Sheikhan, where the most important Yezidi holy site Lalesh is located.

In Turkey, small numbers of Yezidis live in Batman, Sanliurfa, Mardin, and Diyarbakir. Others live in Syria, Armenia, Georgia, as well as Europe, Canada and the United States. Yezidi religious traditions, including prayers and holy books, are administered in the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. In recent years especially, the Yezidis have been accepted as an important element of the broader Kurdish identity.